


Embers of Mistakes

by Chicory



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1470238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chicory/pseuds/Chicory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaius has always been good at ignoring things he doesn't want to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Embers of Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Another old fic which I edited and I'm rather proud of! Since I only read Arthur/Merlin stories from Merlin I do not know if something like this has already been written. I sincerely hope not.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I own nothing! Except this drabble and all the mistakes herewithin.

The first time she seeks for his aid she is just shy of fifteen and grief is still etched deep in the dark shadows beneath her eyes, in the exhausted lines of her mouth.

She hovers by the door hesitantly before she squares her shoulders and raises her chin high, and for a brief, incongruous moment Gaius can see Uther in her instead of her mother.

But he shakes the moment off and gets up, old bones creaking in protest, says, "Please forgive my attire," and she shakes her head, black curls swishing back and forth, tells him, "No, that's all right. I know it's late."

Politely he waits for her to carry on, and he watches her engage in some internal struggle before he gently prompts, "How may I be of assistance?"

When she tells him of her nightmares Gaius does not think much of them. He thinks it makes sense; after all, she has only recently lost her parents, everything she knew, so he hands her a vial and says, "This should help," and her smile is radiant, grateful.

After she leaves, Gaius thinks she truly is a beautiful girl. Much like her mother was.

He returns to bed.

It becomes a habit. Once a night in every two weeks, Gaius can expect Morgana to sneak into his chambers. Sometimes she sits with him, tells him inconsequential incidents of her days or little details from her dreams and laughs delightedly at Gaius' wry humour, her head tilted back. When errant moonlight touches her face she looks ethereal, otherworldly.

However, Gaius can see the deeply rooted loneliness in her whenever she stays for that stolen hour in the night, occasionally walking around in his chambers, trailing delicate fingers over glass vials and jars and old, dusty tomes, asking questions that won't matter because she either does not need to know the answer or does not truly care.

Most of her interactions with Uther happen in the form of arguments and verbal spars. With Arthur she instantly picked up some sort of rivalry. Perhaps because she is the first beautiful girl Arthur has had any interaction with in his fourteen years of life and he just does not _know_ how to be around her and to her Arthur is someone who has everything Morgana wants. Gaius can tell she does not want to be the princess locked in an ivory tower. She wants to be the knight fighting for what she truly believes is right and vanquishing evil.

Gaius has seen her with Guinevere—the maid assigned to her—on a few occasions, talking softly in some remote corners of the castle, but there are boundaries there, something neither of them can cross even if they tried.

Thus Gaius lets her sit with him while midnight bleeds into small hours and sometimes he offers her a cup of tea before she leaves, the vial to keep her nightmares at bay tightly clutched in her hands.

It is about a year later since her arrival that he starts to think something is amiss. There are... incidents, moments of déjà vu that he dismisses at first, but then the vendor in the lower town burns his hand and one of the knights hurts his leg during training, and something is niggling in the back of his mind while he tends to them both. Gaius disregards the thought that he has _done_ this before and goes about his chores as usual. Soon he forgets it and the uneasy feeling vanishes as nothing else happens.

But then the summer storms arrive and Morgana rushes in his chambers, pale and distraught in the candlelight. She tells him she saw a dream of lighting hitting a tree and setting a field on fire. Her words tumble over each other in her haste and she looks seconds away from fainting.

Gaius sits her down at the table, assures her, "They are only dreams, there is no reason to worry," but for the first time since their tentative friendship began, Morgana looks unconvinced. Her eyes keep darting to the window, rabbit-quick and troubled.

The skies are rumbling, trembling with the force of thunders and lightings flash in the dark ominously, but there is no rain as of yet.

Gaius prepares her a cup of tea, camomile to calm her down.

She smiles gratefully, jests, "What would I do without you, Gaius," and is about to take her first sip when the warning bells begin to toll over the noise of the storm.

Instinctively they both look toward the window but see nothing but black clouds and the intricate webs lighting wreathes across the sky. Her eyes are wide and scared. She stays longer than usual that night.

The following morning Gaius arrives in the throne room and Uther tells him there was a fire last night. In one of the fields. Burned it down, but they managed to extinguish it before it spread to neighbouring fields.

Gaius hides his surprise, quells his dawning suspicion, says, "I see," and the King proceeds to other matters, mind already elsewhere.

Gaius, of course, has heard of seers. He has heard it is an innate talent, not something learnt or read from books, and most seers he has seen have been charlatans who offered their predictions for a meagre sum of money. They fabled stories of great romances or fortunes or tragedies depending on the foolish client who wasted their coins to hear things which would never come to pass.

He has never met a true seer before but he knows it is, at best, a fickle, useless skill so he disregards the thought entirely. But in the end it is Morgana who brings it up with him.

"Could it be," and her unspoken question hangs in the air like a noose. Gaius, who has come to know her and care for her, looks at her and he sees the fear and worry in her slumped shoulders. He thinks of her unblemished skin charred and cracked by the fires. Thinks of it with the bluish hue of the drowned. Thinks of the gleam of the executioner's axe against the pale curve of her throat.

Gaius knows what her death would be like because he has _seen_ it all.

Without a conscious decision an answer falls from his lips, "No, often dreams are nonsensical and formed in our subconscious from things we've seen or heard during our everyday life. There is nothing to worry about, my lady."

She still looks uncertain but also as if he has just lifted a great burden from her.

They have both seen what Uther is capable of.

It is not until later when Merlin arrives like a whirlwind of magic and chaos that Gaius' decisions and sins come crawling out of the darkest corners of his mind and stare at him in the face like long dead things. He recalls the friends and strangers he saw burned alive and decapitated. Recalls the children and women he saw drowned. Recalls their families' cries of despair and grief. And he recalls Alice; the only one whom he helped escape.

The others might not have been his family but they had been his kin, and he simply stood aside while they were killed, knowing that every one of them could have just as easily been him.

It is not until later when he looks at Morgana's face—contorted in wrath and madness—that he realises the cost of those sins and the mistakes he has made. How that lonely girl longed for someone to understand her, someone to trust.

Her red lips curl and she says, "I want to see him burn. I think it is about time, don't you, Gaius," and she looks straight at him so that he can see the exact moment when her eyes flash golden like an accusation of all the lies he told her and all the truths he never told her.

The flames roar to life around him. Her face is distorted, engulfed by fire and smoke and it is like so many of his nightmares.

Beside him rest the charred remains of Uther like a twisted monument in the honour of the late King. He had been the first to burn. His screams had lasted for a very long time.

Gaius sends a silent prayer for Merlin whom he had told to run. As long as he and Arthur survive, Gaius believes that something can still be salvaged. There is nothing the two of them cannot do.

His last thought, however, is not for Merlin.

It is _finally_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)


End file.
